


For the Love Which From Our Birth

by ReaperWriter



Series: Mansion House Nocturnes [8]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Civil War, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Prompt Fic, Slow Burn, emma being a little bold, henry being a lot besotted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 02:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6452035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a long day.  Not that there were truly many short days in Mansion House.  Often, Henry’s mind was drawn to Joshua, chapter ten, and the story of the day the sun stood still.  How often he’d felt it so, when there was one man after another whose hand he held as they died, one more widow or aged parent or distraught sister come too late to say good-bye and left to cry in his arms, when yet another soldier needed his counsel because they felt their faith being torn ragged by this bloody war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Love Which From Our Birth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [treasureplanetsheep](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=treasureplanetsheep).



> treasureplanetsheep on Tumblr asked for: "Mercy Street prompt: Frank Stringfellow runs into an actual dentist during one of his hospital visits. So basically he gets dragged into helping with a dental procedure and hijinks and/or murder ensues. OR Anything Emma/Chaplain Hopkins. :P pretty please!!!!"
> 
> So...I tried writing Frank. I really did. And he just came out more and more of an asshole each time. Sorry. :(
> 
> Henry and Emma, however. That I can do. Enjoy!
> 
> Note: I am fudging slightly. "Lord of All, To Thee We Raise" was written in 1864. But I love it. So I used it. Sorry/Not Sorry

It had been a long day.  Not that there were truly many short days in Mansion House.  Often, Henry’s mind was drawn to Joshua, chapter ten, and the story of the day the sun stood still.  How often he’d felt it so, when there was one man after another whose hand he held as they died, one more widow or aged parent or distraught sister come too late to say good-bye and left to cry in his arms, when yet another soldier needed his counsel because they felt their faith being torn ragged by this bloody war.

And how much worse, he supposed, for the men at the front, on the lines, as bullets whizzed around them and cannons and shells blew their comrades apart before their eyes.  He wondered, often, if he would have lived long as an infantry chaplain.  If he would do greater good there than he would here, where death was slower and loss seemed even more insidious.  Perhaps this was the devil’s due for his own misdeeds in his youth.

Stepping out onto the back veranda of the hotel, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, exhausted and sick and heartsore.  How many more days could it go on?  They kept hearing, it’d be over by the end of the month.  By the end of the next.  By the summer, the fall, Christmas.  But as if it was that one long, storied day, nothing changed.  Men came in, broken and wretched and dying, and were sent out; back to the front, or through the death house, or with pieces of their bodies or minds gone.

He prayed, in moments like this.  Asking God to intervene.  To be merciful and just.  To soften men’s hearts and bring about reconciliation, or at least truce.  He prayed for strength and fortitude, for courage and guidance.  For respite.  And most days, there was no immediate answer.  Most days, he was called back to the halls, to hold another man’s hand, or offer words to the next widow, or to hold a service for the happy few who could shamble into his makeshift chapel in the back parlor.

Today though.  Today, as he stood aching with exhausting and heartbreak, a voice came to him. Soft and clear as a bell, drifting on the late afternoon air from an open window further down the porch.

_For the beauty of the earth,_  
for the glory of the skies,   
for the love which from our birth   
over and around us lies;   
Lord of all, to thee we raise   
this our hymn of grateful praise. 

He found himself walking until he found the right one, and look through, saw her.  Emma Green, her hair bound up simply and in a plain gown, so different from how he had first encountered her.  She sat on a small stool next to a rebel boy who couldn’t be much older than sixteen.  As she sang softly, she unwound the bandage from his arm, wetting it a little as she went to keep from pulling off the healing scabs.

_For the beauty of each hour_  
of the day and of the night,   
hill and vale, and tree and flower,   
sun and moon, and stars of light;   
Lord of all, to thee we raise   
this our hymn of grateful praise. 

The boy starred at her, not even flinching, though Henry knew that a bandage change like this could be agony.  But oh, to have such a nurse.  Her sweet, soft face with those wide blue green eyes, pale against her soft dark hair.  And a voice like heaven.  He had not ever felt jealous of the men in their care until now, and it made him burn with both shame and longing.  He wished.  He wished.  But he supposed it did not matter what he wished as her song went on, the old bandage removed and a clean one applied.

Only when she had finished singing, wishing Private Davies to rest, did he step away from the window.  It hadn’t been his place to eavesdrop on her, and he was about to turn and make his way back inside when she stepped out onto the porch herself.  “Nurse Green.”

“Chaplain.”  She gave him that soft smile she seemed some days to reserve for him, the one that made his heart stutter in his chest.  “You should have come in and joined me.  You have a fine voice, and I am sure Private Davies would have appreciated it.”

Henry found himself blushing to be caught out.  “I…I am afraid I am not familiar with that hymn.” He glanced down at where his hands were gripping the porch rail.  “My apologies for eavesdropping.”

“Not at all.” Emma reached over, laying her hand on his, and at that, it felt as though his heart might just stop.  “Did it help?”

“I…beg your pardon?” He wasn’t sure what she meant.  Emma moved to stand next to him, their backs blocking the view of their hands from the door. 

“You looked…wan, earlier.  Weary.”  Her delicate fingers, so small and yet so strong, squeezed his.  “I hoped that, like Private Davies, the song might have given you some peace.”

He turned to look at her, finding fondness and sympathy and something else he couldn’t quite name yet in her eyes.  He was an undeserving, unworthy wretch, he thought, to find such solace in her. His voice sounded softly strangled.  “Yes, it did.”

“I’m glad.”  Her own eyes searched his for a moment, then he could see her make a decision.  “You’ve been a good friend to me, Henry Hopkins.  Perhaps even when I wasn’t deserving of it.”

He knew she meant in those days after Tom.  “You are always deserving of it, Emma.  You deserve all good things.”  It was a great leap in familiarity, one she hadn’t truly given him permission for, and he should expect rebuke.  Instead, something like joy and mischief seemed to dance in her eyes.

“Then know that you are my…my friend, as well.  And you can come to me if you ever need to talk, or unburden yourself.”  Her fingers knit into his again.  “I would have us become intimate friends, Henry.  If you wish.”

Oh, he wished.  He wished so deeply.  “Emma.”

Just then, a voice from inside, probably Nurse Mary called out, “Emma?  Emma, where are you?  We need you for a surgery.”

Quickly, she rose on her toes, and pressed a featherlight kiss against the corner of his mouth. Then she pulled away and was gone, back through the door.

Henry stood stone still, starring at the place she had been.  And for the first time, he prayed for a day to stand still, for the night to never come, lest he wake tomorrow and find this had all been a glorious dream.  Finally, he raised a hand to his mouth, tracing his fingers over where her soft lips had pressed.  Surely, a beautiful daydream.

“Chaplain?  You’re needed.”  He turned to find Matron Brannan looking at him.  “Ward B.”

And Henry shook himself, and moved to follow her.  But not, perhaps, before recalling the last two lines of the verses in Emma’s voice.

_Lord of all, to thee we raise  
this our hymn of grateful praise. _

 


End file.
